The memoir is fiction the story is true. One day in 1855 Lucy Lobdell cut her hair, changed clothes, and went off to live her life as a man. By the time it was over, she was notorious. The New York Times thought her worthy of a lengthy obituary that began Death of a Modern Diana...Dressed in Mans Clothing She Wins a Girls Love. The obit detailed what the Times knew of Lucys life, from her backwoods upbringing to the dance school she ran disguised as a man, where she won the love of a young lady scholar. But that was just the start of the trouble the Times did not know about Lucys arrest and trial for the crime of wearing mens clothes or her jailbreak engineered by her wife, Marie Perry, to whom she had been married by an unsuspecting judge. Lucy lived at a time when women did not commonly travel unescorted, carry a rifle, sit down in bars, or have romantic liaisons with other women.
